In its most basic form, Lean Manufacturing is the systematic elimination of waste by focusing on production costs, product quality and delivery, and worker involvement. In the 1950s, Taiichi Ohno, developer of the Toyota “just-in-time” Production System, created the modern intellectual and cultural framework for Lean Manufacturing and waste elimination. Ohno defined waste as “any human activity which absorbs resources but creates no value.” Largely, Lean Manufacturing represents a fundamental paradigm shift from traditional “batch and queue” mass production to production systems based on product aligned “single-piece flow, pull production.” Whereas “batch and queue” involves.
